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Enforcer Zach Sill brings heart to the Maple Leafs

One month after his arrival from Pittsburgh, forward is praised by teammates and coach for playing with toughness and being a standup guy.

Ottawa Senators' Mark Borowiecki lines up a punch as he fights with Toronto Maple Leafs' Zach Sill during third period in Ottawa on Saturday, March 21, 2015. The Senators defeated the Leafs 5-3. (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

There are arguments in hockey that say the new wave of analytics and concussion lawsuits have factored into the dramatic reduction — and even extinction — of the enforcer role player.

Then there’s the argument for Leafs forward Zach Sill.

“He has more heart than just about anybody I’ve seen,” Leafs coach Peter Horachek said over the weekend in praise of the gritty forward, who has stood out in part for being the only Leaf willing to drop the gloves in Saturday’s game.

Sill finds himself in a dramatically different atmosphere in Toronto, having been sent in a trade deadline deal in late February to the Leafs from a Stanley Cup contender in Pittsburgh.

A fourth-line player “all my life, even in the AHL,” Sill appeared destined for the same territory in Toronto, but his overall value to the team has risen with the roster thinned in several areas, including toughness.

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Horachek has tried to battle those trends with daily demands “for more” out of his players and, all too frequently in the last month, he’s had to resort to questioning his teams’ character as part of his search for a motivational spark.

Sill seems to welcome all those types of challenges that have gone largely unanswered on that thinned out Leafs roster.

“I wouldn’t expect many guys to do what I do,” said Sill, as the Leafs held an optional practice Sunday in preparation for Monday’s home game against Minnesota.

“I’ve got a job to do and I like doing it, it doesn’t bug me at all. It’s an opportunity for me and I’m like a lot of guys who are in that boat, you want that opportunity to play.”

Sill may appear to be chasing a disappearing role in the NHL. Toronto, for instance, made headlines in training camp when the team waived long-time enforcers Colton Orr and Frazer McLaren, following a league-wide trend towards discarding the players whose central purpose on the team was to handle fighting.

At the same time, NHL fights total were dropping dramatically, with arguments that analytics, with its focus on increased puck possession, and concussion lawsuits were prompting a shift away from fighting.

Statistics showed that more than 70 per cent of NHL games last season failed to register a single fight — marking only the second time in 35 years where fighting dropped to such low levels.

The NHL’s top two teams over the past five seasons — Chicago and Los Angeles — also ranked in the bottom 10 in number of fights last season.

But while the need for fighting — especially staged scraps — was both scorned and filtered out of the game, the need for players to stand up for their teammates never faded.

Enter Sill.

In a loss to Ottawa Saturday night — still one of the better competitive games the Leafs have played in a month — Sill immediately responded to a big-time Mark Borowiecki hit on Richard Panik. There was also a scrap against the much larger Eric Gryba earlier in the game.

Sill doesn’t fight every game but he answers the need for one and with the NHL in the playoff stretch, aggressive play and fighting are part of almost every game.

“Its not just one player like that, you need two and even more guys like that, the character guys,” Nazem Kadri said.

“Zach sticks up for his teammates … He talks a lot on the bench and he’s a stand up guy in the dressing room. He earns your respect.”

Sill’s fight total this season reached nine after Saturday’s game — roughly around the 10 mark he’s averaged in the AHL. Like many enforcers before him, he was sat down by a coach somewhere in his career and told that fighting needed to be part of his playing package if he wanted to land full-time work in the NHL.

He had those conversations with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton coaches John Hynes and Alain Nasreddine, but not at the expense of the other skills needed to play at the game’s highest level.

Now, with a one-year deal at an NHL minimum $550,000 expiring this season, Sill has certainly played himself into consideration for next year’s Leafs roster.

“He’s been in a positive situation in Pittsburgh, playing with two of the best players in the world (Crosby and Malkin), and even they went through their struggles,” Horachek said.

“He’s gone through that and he’s been here for a bit now, so he knows who he is and he brings energy every single day. You hope your young players learn from those struggles and get to know what is possible, so that they can pass that message onto the young players who may be here next year.”

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